QUOTES

QUOTES

QUOTES

“It’s wonderful to have a psychologist such as Dr. Crawford on contract through Harris County’s Risk Management program. I’ve attended several of his seminars and hold him in the highest regard. In addition, his weekly “Quotes and Comments” are consistently excellent, and, in my opinion, the BEST! Powerful, enlightening, and even liberating. Many thanks to Dr. Bill!”

~Charlotte Mangum

“Until we know the true cause of our stress, frustration, and anxiety… we won’t be able to do anything about it.”

Bill Crawford

“Until we are trusted, our ability to influence others will be limited or nonexistent.”

Bill Crawford

“We will only change when what we want becomes more important than what we are afraid of.”

Bill Crawford

“I will not ‘should on’ myself today.”

Unknown

“Until we minimize the impact of difficult people who aren’t important, we will never be able deal effectively with those who are.”

Bill Crawford

“Have you ever wondered why we have toenails? I mean, don’t they seem rather useless?”

Bill Crawford

“Negative habits are like chains that, at first, are often too light to be felt…until they feel too heavy to be broken.”

Adapted from Warren Buffet

“Our reactions to life aren’t the problem… it’s our reactions to our reactions that get in the way of our clarity, confidence, and creativity.”

Bill Crawford

“You will never get to your destination if you stop and throw rocks at every dog that barks.”

Winston Churchill

“Knowing who, when, and what to trust is hard until we are coming from the clear, confident, creative part of the brain.”

Bill Crawford

“If our goal is to be influential, we must first ensure that those we wish to influence can’t put ‘You Stupid Idiot’ on the end of anything we say.”

Bill Crawford

“To find the true cause of how we think and feel, find the ‘sponsoring thought’ that created the interpretation that influenced our experience of life.”

Bill Crawford

“Never let those you hate become more powerful than those you love.”

Bill Crawford

“Negative thoughts can help us survive … but they won’t help us thrive.”

Bill Crawford

“One of the ironic components of being influential is the willingness and ability to be influenced, or have what we say be informed by what they say.”

Adapted from Brendon Burchard

“Is your insistence creating resistance?”

Bill Crawford

“The key to supporting improvement in others is turning a performance ‘review’ into a performance ‘preview.”

Bill Crawford

“Everyone wants to live on the top of the mountain, but happiness and growth are mostly found in the climb.”

Adapted from Andy Rooney

“An unfulfilled life follows the path of least persistence.”

Adapted from Andy Rooney

“You cannot make a bad deal with a good person, or a good deal with a bad person.”

Harry Beckwith

“Under all anger is fear, and under all fear is fear of loss.”

Unknown

“Until we understand why we react to certain situations with stress, anger, or frustration, we will not have the clarity necessary to deal with life from a place of confidence, creativity, or compassion.”

Bill Crawford

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal while blaming our misery on the person who started the fire.”

Bill Crawford

“Nothing will sabotage our happiness and success more thoroughly than the fear that we are not enough.”

Bill Crawford

“The simplest questions are often the most profound – Who are you? Where are you going? What are you doing? Ask yourself these often and watch the answers change.”

Richard Bach

“That the birds of worry and anxiety fly over our heads, this you cannot change, but that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent.”

“It is our choices that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

"Professor Dumbledore"

A character from "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" (author: J. K. Rowling)

“All of life is an announcement of who we are. The only question is whether this proclamation will be made by choice or by chance.”

Adapted from Neale Donald Walsch

“We suffer from the illusion that the faster we run, the more likely we are to grasp happiness. The truth is that the velocity necessary for success rarely exceeds the rate of reflection.”

Adapted from Sam Keen

“Intense desire often exerts a strong gravitational pull on belief. When we really want it to be true, we often make it so.” (and this, of course, is both the problem and the solution)

Adapted from Robert Ludlum

“Some people will never change until the misery of the known becomes greater than the mystery of the unknown.”

Adapted from Printer Bowler

“Bitterness does more harm to the vessel in which it is stored . . . than the vessel on which it is poured.”

Unknown

“Blind faith does not require that you close your eyes to reality . . . It only asks that you open your heart to possibilities.”

Steve Butler

“Making changes isn’t about stopping the problem, it’s about starting the solution.”

Bill Crawford

“When deciding what to do next, we can always ask: Does this thought, emotion, or behavior bring me closer to or take me further away from my center?”

Adapted from Stephen Gilligan, Ph.D.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

R. Buckminster Fuller

“Great solutions must take a significant bite out of problems by clarifying their true cause.”

Adapted from Duke Rohe

“Many of us go from being taken care of as children to taking care of others as adults. Shouldn’t there be a time when we learn to take care of ourselves?”

Bill Crawford

“Rest does not need to hold hands with guilt.”

Kathy Wilkins and Melody Ross

“Character isn’t simply inherited. We build it daily by the way we think and act, thought by thought, action by action. If we let fear, anger, or resentment take possession of our mind, these thoughts and actions become self-forged chains. . . chains of habit that are often too light to be felt until they feel too heavy to be broken.”

Adapted from Helen Douglas and Warren Buffet

“Our children…don’t make them grow up in our shadow…let them grow up in our light.”

Adapted from Guy Angelou

“In choosing what to do next, don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do that. For what the world needs is more people who have come alive.”

Adapted from Howard Thurman

“When you come to the edge of all you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen: there will be something solid to stand on or you will be taught how to fly.”

Adapted from Dr. Patrick Overton

“Most of the time we don’t communicate, we just take turns talking.”

Robert Anthony

“The most successful form of correction is when the “other” feels informed versus chastised.”

Bill Crawford

“Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion, even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.”

Eric Hoffer

“You can’t always stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. Sometimes, you have to go to them.”

Adapted from Winnie the Pooh

“Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“To ‘belittle’ is to be little.”

Unknown

“If we let fear, anger, or resentment take possession of our mind, these thoughts and actions become self-forged chains… chains of habit that are often too light to be felt until they feel too heavy to be broken.”

Adapted from Warren Buffet

“Many people have the right aim in life, they just never get around to pulling the trigger. The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps — we must step up the stairs.”

Adapted from Vance Havner

“In our lives, we can either be a reflection of the world around us . . . or a beam that enlightens the lives of others.”

Bill Crawford

“We are what we repeatedly do… excellence, therefore, isn’t just an act, but a habit and life isn’t just a series of events, but an ongoing process of self-definition.”

Adapted from Aristotle

“What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”

Unknown

“What is not brought to consciousness, comes to us as fate.”

Carl Jung

“Those who love to be feared and fear to be loved, they themselves are more frightened than any one.”

Saint Francis de Sales

“Hiding our fears with the hope that they will go away rarely works. Unlike most organic substance, fear doesn’t decompose when it’s buried.”

Adapted from Claire Otoms (Dame Edna) on the show, "Ally McBeal"

“Each day befriend a single fear, and the miscellaneous terrors of being human will never join together to form such a morass of vague anxiety that it rules your life from the shadows of the unconscious. We learn to fly not by being fearless, but by the daily practice of courage.”

Sam Keen

“Blessed are the flexible for they will not allow themselves to become bent out of shape!”

Adapted from Robert Ludlum

“Forgiveness is the realization that you are no longer harmed.”

Unknown

“Freedom is one thing we cannot have unless we are willing to give it to others.”

Adapted from William Allen White

“Why waste our life in friction when the same effort can be turned into momentum?”

Adapted from Frances Willard

“The future is not just a series of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created–created first in the mind and will, and then realized next in activity.”

Adapted from John Schaar

“The act of giving is simply a behavior, and the gift merely a symbol. It is the energy behind both that will determine their impact on our lives.”

Bill Crawford

“A process for discernment: God is my ultimate source of truth and wisdom, and dwells forever at the center of my being. Therefore, any thought, emotion, or action that takes me further from my center can be neither truthful, nor wise.”

Bill Crawford

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

Martin Luther King

“Seek to create change in your life not because something is ‘wrong’, but because it no longer makes an accurate statement of ‘who you are’.”

Adapted from Neale Donald Walsch

“Live so that the child that you were would be proud of the adult you are becoming.”

Unknown

“Having a baby no more makes one a parent than having a baby grand piano makes one a pianist.”

Adapted from Michael Levine

“The universe guides and nurtures those who sincerely strive to understand and follow its laws – It relentlessly frustrates, meticulously unravels, and ultimately educates those who don’t. (Nothing personal)”

Printer Bowler

“The first rule of holes…if you are in one, stop digging.”

Unknown

“In the path of your true happiness lie the lessons you have chosen this lifetime to learn.”

Richard Bach

“What if happiness was our default position?”

Adapted from Toby Ziegler (television character on "The West Wing")

“As long as we define ourselves in terms of our pain and our problems, we will never be free from either.”

Adapted from Eckhart Tolle

“Honesty isn’t always just saying the truth, sometimes it’s about facing the truth. A life of confusion can often be a form of self-delusion … What are you pretending not to know?”

Ken Frogley

“Until we have named our ghosts and blessed our hopes… we will forever remain someone else’s creation.”

Adapted from Minard Craighead

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”

Edgar Allan Poe

“One aspect of a successful relationship is not just how compatible you are, but how you deal with your incompatibility.”

Adapted from Daniel Goleman, Ph.D.

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Misunderstandings often arise when we judge others’ intent by their behavior, while judging our behavior by our intent.”

Adapted from Steven Covey

“If people can get you to answer the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answer.”

Adapted from Thomas Pynchon

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

Albert Einstein

“Regardless of what is being discussed … the issue is never more important than the quality of the interaction.”

Bill Crawford

“Some people drink deeply from the fountain of knowledge … others just gargle and spit.”

Adapted from Robert Anthony

“Those that look to us for leadership will always be more motivated by the power of our example than an example of our power.”

Adapted from Bill Clinton

“Your life is not about what you are doing. Yet, it is true that what you are doing is often a reflection of what your life is about.”

Adapted from Neale Donald Walsch

“What if all the world is indeed a stage … and what if Love wrote the play? “

Adapted from William Shakespeare and David Wilcox

“We limit our success when we mistake the limits of our perception for reality.”

Bill Crawford

“Love is the productive form of relatedness to others and to oneself. It implies responsibility, care, respect. If it isn’t productive and respectful, it isn’t love, but only fear masquerading as love.”

Adapted from Erich Fromm

“Love is most successful when expressed in this order… … love of who you are … what you do … who you do it for, & … who you do it with”

Bill Crawford

“Masters in the art of living draw no sharp distinction between their work and their play, their labor and their leisure, their mind and their body, their education and their recreation. They simply pursue their vision of excellence through whatever they are doing, and leave others to determine whether they are working or playing. To themselves, they always seem to be doing both.”

Adapted from Michael Rogge

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is.”

Albert Einstein

“Life is not a means to an end but a series of experiences. Are you creating your series ‘on purpose’?”

Bill Crawford

“There are two ways to respond to the trials and tribulations of our present and past … ‘Ain’t it awful?’ … or … ‘Good information!’ Our choice of responses will determine our experience of life.”

Bill Crawford

“The biggest mistake we make in creating successful relationships is that we seek to experience who we are through others rather than allowing others to experience who they are through us.”

Adapted from Neale Donald Walsch

“We get treated in life the way we teach others to treat us.”

Dr. Wayne Dyer

“A relationship is like life. It isn’t a process of preservation, but of change and growth. Unless you grow and change together, you will change … and grow apart.”

“We have some role in almost everything that happens in our lives. When “bad” things happen, the mistake is not in the role, but in calling them bad. For in calling them bad, we call ourselves bad, since we had a role in their creation. We then have only two choices: blame ourselves, or disown our creative power, neither of which is congruent with our highest purpose.”

Adapted from Neale Donald Walsch

“Sometimes there is a big difference between what we have the right to do, and what is right to do.”

Justice Potter Stewart

“The difference between self-confidence and conceit is as simple as love and fear. Jesus was self-confident … Hitler was afraid.”

Bill Crawford

“Beating ourselves up is really beating ourselves down! If “down” isn’t where we’re wanting to go, then maybe “beating on ourselves” isn’t the best path to take.”

Bill Crawford

“Let’s use our imagination not to scare ourselves to death, but to bring ourselves to life.”

Adapted from Adele Brookman

“To truly be of service to others, we must first serve the server. The ability to bring an enlightened presence to those in need is the ability to light a candle without burning ourselves out.”

Bill Crawford

“Stress is an indicator of our belief in the value and validity of our worries and fears.”

Bill Crawford

“When we take no responsibility for any aspect of our past, we limit our ability to respond in the present and the future.”

Bill Crawford

“Tact is the art of making a point without inflicting a wound.”

Georgia Crawford

“What you get by reaching your destination is not as important as who you become along the way.”

Adapted from Robert Anthony

“By the thoughts we choose to allow in our hearts, we thereby choose the kind of life we experience. We always, always have a choice.”

Printer Bowler

“Lying makes a problem part of the future; truth makes a problem part of the past.”

Rick Pitino," Lead to Succeed"

“Trying” is an attitude option that says your time for success is not now, but in the future, or maybe never.”

Printer Bowler

“We are not responsible for every thought that goes wandering through our mind. We are, however, responsible for the ones we bestow with value and validity.”

Adapted from Peter McWilliams

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

Marcel Proust

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.”

Lin Yutang

“The problem with always keeping your nose to the grindstone is that pretty soon, all you smell is grind.”

Steve Butler

“Worry doesn’t empty tomorrow of its troubles… it empties today of its strength!”

Corrie Ten Boom

“To invest our worries and anxiety with value and validity is to place our faith in fear.”

Bill Crawford

“True failures are divided into two classes … those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.”

Adapted from John Charles Salak

“Letting go” of fear and worry will never work, primarily because the motivation to “let go” is generally fear and worry about what will happen if we don’t.”

Bill Crawford

“Growth isn’t about counting the number of times we fall down, but the lightness with which we pick ourselves back up.”

and/or

“A mistake is just a “take” or an action that we took, that missed.”

Steven Levine and Robert Pennington (respectively)

The Four-Fold Way: A Guide to Creating a Life Worth Living

1. Show up 2. Pay attention to the meaningful 3. Say your truth, without judgment 4. Be open to, but not attached to the outcome

Adapted from Angeles Arrien

“Many people would rather be certain of their worries and fears, than risk the uncertainty of hope and optimism.” and, “The road to success is not paved with stones of avoidance. The ability to optimize our potential is dependent on our willingness to engage the world optimistically.”

Bill Crawford

“To the degree that I cease to pursue my deepest passions, I will gradually be controlled by my deepest fears.”

Sam Keen - "Learning to Fly"

“If we can be patient in one moment of anger, we can escape a hundred days of sorrow.”

Adapted from a Chinese Proverb

“The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t.”

Henry Ward Beecher

“Perspective … use it or lose it!”

Richard Bach

“Today I can cry because roses have thorns, or I can celebrate that thorns have roses.”

Unknown

“A pessimist is one who burns his bridges before he gets to them.”

Sidney Ascher

“True ‘joy’ is the difference between just amusing ourselves to death and creating ‘meaningful’ pleasure.”

Adapted from Sidney Poitier

“Our past is not, as some fear, a series of events carved in stone that we must carry around for the rest of our lives… but a kaleidoscope of experiences that, when viewed through different lenses, can ‘color’ (change) how we see our present and future.”

Bill Crawford

“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”

Oscar Wilde

“We can live in fear of influence, or create a sphere of influence … our choice will define our life!”

Adapted from Steve Butler

“How do you keep people from jerking your chain? Don’t give your chain to jerks!”

Bill Crawford

“If we are to find our way across troubled waters, we are better served by the company of those who build bridges than those who burn them.”

Adapted from Marilyn Ferguson

“Too many of us are trapped between wanting to live our dreams, but afraid that we are stuck living our fears.”

Adapted from Les Brown

“When the question is either/or, the answer is almost always … both/and.”

Bill Crawford

“How we experience life is always “good information” about the degree to which our beliefs and choices are working for us. We can, however, choose to believe that we are a victim of the world we see, and have no choices. And, of course, we will receive “good information” about this belief as well.”

Bill Crawford

“Leaders should interact with everyone in their organization as if the interaction is being recorded and will be used as a training film on how to treat colleagues, coworkers, and customers.”

Bill Crawford

“You can’t ‘cope with’ change anymore than you can ‘manage’ stress.”

Bill Crawford

“The cooperative, creative, and flexible parts of your children reside in the joyful part of their brain.”

Bill Crawford

“Family is the place where acceptance and validation are most needed, but often the hardest to find.”

Bill Crawford

“How many cares one loses when we decide not to be something, but someone.”

Coco Chanel

“The problem with doing nothing is that it validates the belief that nothing can be done.”

Bill Crawford

“Success, happiness, peace of mind, and fulfillment … the most priceless of human treasures … are available to all who make ‘good’ things happen in the world around them.”

Joe Klock

“Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.” ~ Seth Godin

“But if your work is your art, a personal reflection of who you are, the only person who can do that better than you, is a future you.”

Bill Crawford

“One key to moving forward is knowing what to leave behind.”

Adapted from Seth Godin

“When a loving, meaningful experience is our goal, we must trust an energy that is congruent with that goal as our guide along the way. Bottom line, trust love over fear if love is what you’re after.”

Bill Crawford

“One key to learning and success is the willingness to try something new, and feel momentarily incompetent.”

Adapted from Seth Godin

“Until we become clear about our own worth and value, we will forever be searching for it in the eyes of others.”

Bill Crawford

“When people feel criticized, they almost always defend the behavior you want them to change.”

Bill Crawford

“Your success is no longer about your ability to do what you are told, and do it well.”

Adapted from Seth Godin

“Change isn’t about what you are stopping… it’s about what you are starting.”

Bill Crawford

“Children don’t know that they are lovable until they are loved. They need to see it in our eyes before they can accept it in their hearts.”

Bill Crawford

“Trusting fear, while fearing trust and happiness often creates a less than happy life.”

Bill Crawford

“Want to change your experience of life? Change the problem to the practice field.”

Bill Crawford

“When we put problems on the back burner, often they just sit there and burn.”

Georgia Crawford

“Never define yourself in terms of how you are negatively affected by others.”

Bill Crawford

“Setting healthy boundaries may require that we reclaim personal properties that we may have unwittingly deeded to others in the past.”

Steve Butler

“Never define people or situations in terms of their effect on you, unless you want to give them the power to make you feel that way.”

Bill Crawford

“Freedom isn’t about having permission to do whatever we want… it’s about having the courage to do whatever fills our life with meaning.”

Bill Crawford

“To change any aspect of our life we must be willing to change our mind… Unfortunately, that is the one thing most people are the least willing to do.”

Bill Crawford

“When creativity is under the gun… it usually ends up getting killed!”

Harvard Business Review

“Every job is a self-portrait of the person who does it. Autograph your work with excellence, regardless of the painters around you.”

Anonymous

“What we feed our mind becomes the material with which we build our life.”

Bill Crawford

“Trust is simply a set of expectations about the present and the future. The key is to ensure that these are chosen and evaluated based upon awareness versus fear.”

Bill Crawford

“You can’t use anxiety to deal with your anxiety… it only makes you more anxious.”

Bill Crawford

“In order to become more influential with those who are resistant to our point of view, we must be willing to start with what is influencing them.”

Bill Crawford

“Never make your highest purpose, or the most important thing in your life something that is outside of your control.”

Bill Crawford

“The way to encourage people to be accountable is to engage the responsible, accountable, trustworthy part of their brain.”

Bill Crawford

“Sleep is simply a chemical change in our brain and body (melatonin) – It’s not a place we go, it is a state of being that we fall into.”

Bill Crawford

“Sometimes our ability to accept what we can’t change is tied to our willingness to change what we can.”

Bill Crawford

“One key to creating a meaningful life, is choosing what we want to feel, and for how long.”

Bill Crawford

“The past exists not as a factual recounting of what happened, but as an experience that we are constantly recreating in our mind … which means we CAN change the past!”

Bill Crawford

“The key to being with family is to engage with those we love in a way we would teach to those we love.”

Bill Crawford

“You can’t use stress, anxiety, frustration, and worry to deal with your stress, anxiety, frustration, and worry. It’s like pulling up to a burning building with a flame thrower. The energy of the problem can’t be the energy behind a successful solution.”

Bill Crawford

“Responsibility is all about our ability to respond.”

Unknown

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal while blaming our misery on the one who started the fire.”

Bill Crawford

“To be influential in our conversations, we must first be aware of two things, (1) what do we want to bring to the conversation and (2) what do we want to bring out in others.”

Bill Crawford

“To influence others to change, you must be able to frame that change in terms of the future, and in a way that has value to all concerned.”

Bill Crawford

“Autonomy, Purpose, & Mastery: If you are having difficulty creating the life you want, chances are one or more of these are missing.”

Bill Crawford

“The past is experience, the present experiment, and the future expectations. Use your experience in your experiments to achieve your expectations.”

Unknown

“When our worries and fears just don’t make sense, it’s possible we are trusting the part of the brain that doesn’t make sense… it just reacts.”

Bill Crawford

“Self-care isn’t selfish (it is a gift to all concerned). You can’t serve from an empty vessel.” ~ Adapted from Eleanor Brown

Bill Crawford

“Worry, shame, and fear can’t be the energy with which we deal with food and weight. It only spurs us to eat more food and produce more glucose/sugar which gets stored as fat.”

Bill Crawford

“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?”

Satchel Paige

“Let’s not let our fear of dementia deepen our fear of dementia.”

Bill Crawford

“To find the true cause of how you think and feel, find the ‘sponsoring thought’ that created the interpretation that created your experience of life.”

Bill Crawford

“The question to ask each night before you go to bed: If I live every day the same way I did today, what kind of future would that create?”

Entrepreneur Magazine

“You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.”

Wayne Dyer

“You can’t get people to ‘Yes’ by telling them ‘No'”

Bill Crawford

“Saying ‘Thanks’ not only acknowledges appreciation for some act in the past and/or what we have now, it is also a powerful force for shaping the future.”

Bill Crawford

“Stress is actually good information… a valuable signal that the middle brain (our limbic system) is interpreting, or misinterpreting, some situation as threatening.”

Bill Crawford

“You never want to tie your peace of mind to another person’s state of mind.”

Bill Crawford

“Resistance almost always triggers resentment, and is rooted in the powerless of childhood.”

Bill Crawford

“Significance isn’t about the number of friends we have on Facebook, but about how much we would be missed if we were gone.”

“There is no such thing as a selfless act … nor should there be. We don’t have to be selfless to avoid being selfish.”

Bill Crawford

“The meaning that we attach to our stories makes us either bitter or better. I suggest we do this by choice, and not by chance.”

Bill Crawford

“True confidence is the ability to own and learn from our mistakes, without the prospect of shame or blame.”

Bill Crawford

“Worrying about things going wrong isn’t the way to make them go right.” True, & not true.

Unknown

“Superiority has an inferiority complex.”

Duke Rohe

“If I lived everyday the way I lived today … what kind of future would I create?”

Entrepreneur Magazine

“Remembering the best of the past can provide a foundation for a wonderful future … it’s all about appreciation and application.”

Bill Crawford

“Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit (even failure).”

Adapted from E.E. Cummings

“The greatest challenge in life is discovering who you are. The second greatest is being happy with what you find.”

Craig Crippen

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by a lack of meaning and purpose.”

Victor Frankl

“I wonder how much of what is weighing us down is truly ours to carry?”

Adapted from Aditi

“The Mind is a Powerful Force. It Can Enslave us or Empower Us. It Can Plunge us into the Depths of Misery or Take Us To the Heights of Ecstasy. Learn to Use the Power Wisely.”

David Cuschieri

“Ships don’t sink because of the water around them; ships sink because of the water that gets in them. Don’t let what’s happening around you get inside you and weigh you down.”

Unknown

“True confidence is the willingness to have our answers questioned.”

Unknown

“The secret to happiness is a high tolerance for ambiguity.”

Sam Buser, Ph.D.

“Every successful person begins with two beliefs … that the future can be better than the present, and that I have the power to make it so.”

David Brooks

“You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.”

Wayne Dyer

“When we take care of ourselves like we would take care of someone we love, the quality of our living and our giving goes up.”

Bill Crawford

“Here is to that part of all of us that is not meant to be caged? the part that dreams, strives, bucks the system, dares to imagine what is possible, and relishes the process of bringing those dreams to fruition.”

Bill Crawford

“Deciding who and what to trust is an essential step in claiming and creating our lives as adults.”

Bill Crawford

“When the storms of life hit, the resilient simply adjust their sails.”

Bill Crawford

“What if we tweeted everyone the way we like to be tweeted?”

Adapted from Miri Rodriquez

“One key to creating a life worth living is to practice responding to challenging situations on purpose until these responses become reactions.”

Bill Crawford

“Let’s be sure to taste our words before we spit them out.”

Unknown

“When there is an elephant in the room there is little room left for understanding, consensus, or problem solving.”

Bill Crawford

“When the storms of life hit, the resilient adjust their sails.”

Bill Crawford

“Success doesn’t come from what you do occasionally. It comes from what you do consistently.”

Marie Forleo

“The energy we choose to drive our thoughts, emotions and behaviors is the energy that creates our life.”

Bill Crawford

“Autonomy, Purpose, and Mastery: If you are having difficulty creating the life you want, chances are one or more of these are missing.”

Bill Crawford

“To be heard and understood by anyone we need to first speak their language.”

Bill Crawford

“We don’t have to learn to react…it happens automatically. We do, however, want to learn to respond in a way that we would recommend to someone we love.”

Bill Crawford

“The only thing complaining does is convince other people that you are not in control.”

Unknown

“Let’s not miss out on our life just because we are too busy scrolling through someone else’s.”

Adapted from Mel Robbins

“Our ’emotional wake’ are the stories that are told about us when we are not around.”

Bill Crawford

“Our ’emotional wake’ are the stories that are told about us when we are not around.”

Adapted from Susan Scott

“Never mix bad words with a bad mood. We will have many opportunities to change a mood, but the words we speak will live in their minds forever.”

Adapted from Pinterest

“We don’t create the life we want by faking anything. Instead, we access the best of who we are and practice it until it becomes our new habit.”

Bill Crawford

“Leadership is influencing others to do and be their best for the good of all concerned. Obedience is what you teach your dog.”

Bill Crawford

“How we make others feel about themselves says a lot about us.”

Unknown

“Ask yourself every moment, ‘Is this how I want to be thinking, feeling and acting?’… and only continue when the answer is yes.”

Adapted from Richard Bach

“We never want to make our Highest Purpose, or the most important thing in our life something that is beyond our control.”

Bill Crawford

“People are like tea bags, sometimes what gets them in “hot water” can also bring out their true nature and make them stronger.”

Unknown

“If you are not playing a big enough game, you will screw up the game you are playing just to give yourself something to do.”

John-Roger & Peter McWilliams

“Physiologically, it simply doesn’t matter whether your anger is justified or not. The body doesn’t make moral judgments about feelings… it just responds.”

Doc Childre

“Those who are constantly at war with others are seldom at peace with themselves.”

William Hazlitt

“Confidence is a belief and feeling that things will turn out well because we are willing, worthy, and capable.”

Brendon Burchard

“The Three Rules Of Life: If you do not go after what you want, you’ll never have it. If you do not ask, the answer will always be no. If you do not step forward, you will always be in the same place.”

Unknown

“Anger is never without a reason, but it is rarely reasonable.”

Adapted from Benjamin Franklin

“Anxiety is experiencing failure in advance. Worry is not preparation. We can’t access our best by fearing the worst.”

Seth Godin/Bill Crawford

“If we don’t pay attention to what we are paying attention to … we will never know if the payment is worth the cost.”

Bill Crawford

“Why are questions more important than answers?”

Harvard Business Review

“You don’t have to attend every argument to which you are invited.”

Unknown

“When our purpose becomes avoidance, our life becomes a void.”

Bill Crawford

“Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become a reality.”

Earl Nightingale

“The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth of the hole.”

Unknown

“What we should learn before we die is what we’re running from, and to, and why.”

Adapted from James Thurber

“When ‘Being Rushed’ is the problem … rushing is never the solution.”

Bill Crawford

“If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is this the good news?”

William Somerset Maugham and/or Robert Anthony

“We are either creating new beliefs or reacting to old ones, depending on where we invest our attention. Creating keeps us from reacting because it is impossible to do both at the same time.”

Adapted from Printer Bowler

“When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a way that when you die the world cries and you rejoice.”

Native American Proverb

“The only time a mistake becomes a failure is when we look for someone to blame.”

Bill Crawford

“All of life presents itself as a cycle of cause and effect. When this cycle is negative, there are three ways to change. You can change the cause, change the effect, or choose the most powerful option… become the cause!”

Bill Crawford

“Everything that happens in our lives is “good information” about the degree to which our choices are working for us. We can, however, choose to believe that we are a victim of the world we see, and have no choices. And, of course, we will receive “good information” about this belief as well.”

Bill Crawford

“The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.”

Marcel Pagnol

“Change isn’t the problem. People can deal with change, they just can’t deal with being changed.”

Adapted from Peter Senge

“We cannot discover new lands until we first have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

Adapted from Andre Gide

“You don’t have to become something that you aren’t to become better than you are.”

Sidney Poitier

“As we interact with others, we can either be a person who is bringing out their best or pointing out their worst. Regardless, however, our choice is always more information about us than them.”

Bill Crawford

“Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you.”

H. Jackson Brown

“We can’t always choose how we feel. We can, however, choose what we do about it, which ironically can change how we feel!”

Bill Crawford

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.”

Lin Yutang

“You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You find yourself by coming into the present.”

Eckhart Tolle

“Words are the ambassadors of our intentions. How we say what we say makes a statement about who we are.”

Adapted from Susan Harrow

“The basic building block of good communications is the feeling that every human being is unique and of value.”

Unknown

“Live never to be ashamed if anything you do or say is published around the world … even if what is published is not true.”

Richard Bach

“Courage isn’t the absence of fear, but a decision that what we want is more important than what we are afraid of.”

Bill Crawford

“Constructive Criticism” = An Oxymoron “Criticism can be effective when there is something that must be destroyed or dissolved, but it is capable only of harm when there is something to be built.”

Adapted from Carl Jung

“Living exclusively in the land of the head or the heart will always be a limiting, limited experience. The most successful among us have dual citizenship.”

Bill Crawford

“A discussion becomes destructive when it begins to generate more heat than light.”

Adapted from M. Scott Peck

“If you learn to know your enemy before you hate him, you may learn to not have an enemy.”

Mogwat the Magpie

“Excellence is the result of: Caring more than others think is wise… Risking more than others think is safe… Dreaming more than others think is practical, and Expecting more than others think is possible.”

Ronnie Max Oldham

“When all is said and done, our lives will either be a collection of experiences or excuses. Unfortunately, most people wait until all is said and done to decide what they want to collect.”

inspired by John Roger and Peter McWilliams

“The bond that links one’s true family is not necessarily one of blood but of respect and joy in each other’s life.”

Richard Bach

“What we are afraid to communicate runs our life.”

Adapted from Robert Anthony

“Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed.”

Michael Pritchard

“Every moment of our lives begins with one of two phrases: ‘I’m afraid that …’ or ‘I would love to …’ Our choice of phrases determines our experience of life.”

Bill Crawford

“Fear of feeling bad rarely makes one feel good.”

Bill Crawford

“The bend in the road is not the end of the road unless we fail to make the turn.”

Unknown

“When we open up a quarrel Between the present and the past We only sacrifice the future It’s the bitterness that lasts.

So, don’t yield to the fortunes You sometimes see as fate You may have a new perspective On a different day And if you don’t give up, and don’t give in You may just be okay”

Mike Rutherford of Mike and the Mechanics - "The Living Years"

“Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.”

Stephen Covey

“A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.”

Unknown

“True generosity is when you give your all and yet feel as if it cost you nothing.”

Adapted from Simone De Beauvoir

“We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.”

Winston Churchill

“All connections are infused with dreams of what is possible in the future. Thus, when we lose something or someone important to us, we aren’t just grieving the loss, we are grieving the shattered dream.”

Bill Crawford

“Grieving is not the problem, it’s part of the solution. It is an unlearned, self-sufficient process that helps us to move from the past to the future, from inaction to action… from shattered dreams to more purposeful dreams based upon who we really are and what we can create.”

Adapted from Ken Moses

“You can change without growing, but you cannot grow without changing. Focus on the growth, and change becomes the “good news.”

Unknown

“Carrying a grudge is like being stung to death by just one bee.”

William H. Walton

“There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change, but it doesn’t change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is harder for others to see. While you hold it, you can’t get lost. Tragedies happen, people get hurt or die, and you grow old and die. Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding. You don’t ever let go of the thread!”

William Stafford

“The journey of life is both too short and too precious to be sidetracked by guilt trips.”

Bill Crawford

“The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth of the hole.”

Unknown

“Habit is either the best of servants, or the worst of masters.”

Nathaniel Emmons

“Happiness is not a reward — it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment — it is a result.”

Robert Green Ingersoll

“A happy life is just a string of happy moments, but most people don’t create the happy moments because they’re so busy chasing a happy life.”

Adapted from Esther Hicks

“There is brutality and there is honesty. There is no such thing as brutal honesty.”

Robert Anthony

“Hope and optimism aren’t just attitudes, they are life strategies.”

Adapted from Thomas Friedman

“Any powerful idea is absolutely fascinating, and absolutely useless until we call on it to inform our choices.”

Adapted from Richard Bach

“Nothing destroys a relationship quicker than our fears of inadequacy and loss.”

Bill Crawford

“There are two ways to make someone important in our lives … we can either love them or hate them.”

Bill Crawford

“When we are inspired, our thoughts break their bonds, our mind transcends limitations, and our consciousness expands in every direction. Dormant forces, faculties, and talents become alive, and we discover ourselves to be greater by far than we have ever dreamed ourselves to be.”

Adapted from Patanjali (1st to 3rd century BC)

“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.”

“A discussion becomes destructive when it begins to generate more heat than light.”

Adapted from M. Scott Peck

“It’s not the person that has the most toys, but the person that creates the most joy that is truly wealthy.”

Unknown

“The mark of a true leader is not how many followers they have, but how many leaders they produce.”

Adapted from Neale Donald Walsch

“We are not merely what we know, we are what we are willing to learn.”

The Gihon Foundation

“Life is like a grindstone, whether it grinds us down or polishes us up, however, depends on us.”

Adapted from L. Thomas Holdcroft

“Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they’re yours.”

Richard Bach

“No one ever ‘listened’ themselves into trouble.”

Unknown

“Wisdom is our reward for being willing to listen … all those times when we prefer to talk.”

Adapted from D.J. Kaufman

“True ‘magic’ is simply the ability to transcend what seems to be and, thus, transform one’s experience. Maybe we could all use a little ‘Harry Potter’ in our lives.”

Bill Crawford

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.”

George Carlin

“We can either make ourselves miserable, or make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.”

Carlos Castaneda

“Every thought, emotion, and action is a statement about who we are, and who we are becoming. Why not make this statement ‘On Purpose’?”

Adapted from Neale Donald Walsch

“Behind every great answer is a greater question. The challenge in life is having the patience to ask the most purposeful questions, and the courage to listen to, and act upon the answers.”

Steve Butler

“Realistic optimism allows us to experience the best until we have to deal with the worst … which often, never comes.”

Bill Crawford

“Just because you have a history with someone … doesn’t mean that you need to keep repeating it.”

Debbie Mandel

“Never make a person a priority to whom you are an option.”

Unknown

“How long will we give up the days and weeks of our lives addicted to someone else’s drama?”

Unknown

“Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

Malachy McCourt

“I will” is a statement that merely speaks to some possibility in the future & to influence your life in the most powerful way, begin with the words “I am.”

Bill Crawford

“Images of resentment and revenge only have us spending the precious moments of our lives imagining the ‘other’ as both dangerous and important!”

Bill Crawford

“Selfish is caring for ourselves at others’ expense … Self-care is taking care of ourselves so that we can be there for others.”

Bill Crawford

“Every moment is an opportunity to imagine and act out a fresh version of “How do I want to define myself, or who do I want to be now?”

Adapted from Printer Bowler

“Regardless of the problem, as long as our solution requires someone else to change, we will never know the power and promise of self-determination.”

Bill Crawford

“Creating a meaningful life has less to do with how we feel about our past than what we do about our future.”

Bill Crawford

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. And in this choice lies our freedom and power to grow.”

Adapted from Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Stress is a signal that something needs to change. Suffering, is when we don’t make the change!”

Bill Crawford

“If you’re looking for the key to the Universe, I have some bad news and some good news. The bad news is … there is no key to the Universe. The good news is… it has been left unlocked.”

Swami Beyondananda

“Learning is remembering what you already know, doing is demonstrating that you know it, teaching is reminding others that they know it just as well as you … we are all learners, doers, and teachers.”

Richard Bach

“The best way to create a purposeful life is to allow the soul’s decision to precede the body’s action. One does not do something in order to be compassionate, one is compassionate and, therefore, does certain things in certain ways. The actions of the body were meant to be reflections of a state of being, not attempts to attain a state of being.”

Adapted from Neale Donald Walsch

“When dealing with problems, seek not to “change” some aspect of your life but instead, choose who you want to become as a path to what you want. Transformation and healing then take place as a process of becoming versus avoiding.”

Bill Crawford

“Truth is often painful to speak, but soothing to live.”

Mogwat the Magpie

“Unconsciousness and unhappiness comes from our compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation.”

Adapted from Eckhart Tolle

“Anything that is of value in life only multiplies when given.”

Deepak Chopra

“The true measure of our belief in the validity of our values is our willingness to act upon them.”

Bill Crawford

“One key to success is knowing the difference between knowledge and wisdom. One is information from the past while the other is the key to the future.”

Bill Crawford

“Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.”

Arthur Somers Roche

“Worrying about the future is like trying to eat the hole in a doughnut. It’s munching on what isn’t.”

Barry Neil Kaufman

“To do a certain kind of thing you have to be a certain kind of person.”

Zen Saying

“In school you get the lesson and then take the test … in life you take the test and then get the lesson.”

Unknown

“The key to success isn’t just thinking about what we are doing but doing something about what we are thinking.”

Adapted from Peter Senge

“Making a mistake and then judging ourselves harshly is like paying compound interest on a bad investment.”

Doc Childre and Howard Martin

“Optimism allows us to face the music, even when we don’t like the tune.”

Adapted from Vern McLellan's "The Complete Book of Practical Proverbs and Wacky Wit" (original author not specified)

“Sometimes we stay in Hell a long time because we have learned the names of the streets.”

Michael Levine

“The present is the past rolled out for understanding, and the future rolled up for action.”

Adapted from Will Durant

“Peace of Mind? Don’t leave home (or go home) without it.”

Bill Crawford

“The empty experience of an unfulfilled life lies down the path of least persistence.”

Adapted from Vern McLellan's "The Complete Book of Practical Proverbs and Wacky Wit" (original author not specified)

“Perspective is what allows us to step back and see the entire forest instead of just the same old tree we keep running into again and again.”

Bill Crawford

“We’ve all heard that in life, when one door is closed, another is opened. Unfortunately, many of us are so focused on the darkness left by what has been lost, we never see the light coming through the newly opened door.”

Bill Crawford

“We can easily forgive the child who is afraid of the dark… the real tragedy is the adult who is afraid of the light.”

Adapted from Plato

“True vision is the ability to see in another more than they are showing you.”

Neale Donald Walsch

“Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against the cold. For as we put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will diminish its power to harm. In like manner, as we grow in patience when we meet with great wrongs, they too can become powerless as well.”

Adapted from Leonardo Da Vinci

“Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.”

Albert Einstein

“Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”

Eric Hoffer

“Holding on to painful images of the past in order to avoid painful experiences in the future serves only to color the present with pain.”

Bill Crawford

“One barrier to being a great parent is the mistaken belief that we are raising kids.”

Bill Crawford

“As long as we define stress as how some person or situation is making us feel, we will have to change the world around us to find peace of mind.”

Bill Crawford

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Steve Jobs

“The most powerful times in our lives can be the time between times, or life’s transitions that give us the opportunity to choose.”

Bill Crawford

“A meaningful life is composed of a series of meaningful moments. If this is what we want, then the ability to infuse each moment with meaning would seem to be a skill worth practicing.”

Bill Crawford

“You can’t fight fire with fire, or fear with fear.”

Bill Crawford

“Diversity, or the state of being different, isn’t the same as inclusion. One is a description of what is, while the other describes a style of interaction essential to effective teams and organizations.”

Bill Crawford

“Demonizing the opposition only leaves us with a mind full of Demons. Maybe we should be mindful of something more constructive.”

Bill Crawford

“Do not train children to learn by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”

Plato

“Success in this world depends not on just knowing where we stand, but also in what direction we are moving.”

Adapted from Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Remembering the past should help you create a purposeful future, not cause you to be afraid of it.”

“When life has tied us in ‘nots,’ courage, hope, and optimism can be our ‘undoing.”

and,

“If fear or concern about a problem is what is causing our stress, fearing the stress won’t solve the problem.”

Mike Darley and Bill Crawford (respectively)

“The problem with anxiety is that its main byproduct is more anxiety.”

Bill Crawford

“Sometimes knowing what to do is knowing when to stop.”

Bill Crawford

“When we engage people positively, we create a receptive platform for the ideas and information we wish to communicate.”

Bill Crawford

“The problem with righteous indignation is that even when you’re right, you’re still left feeling indignant.”

Bill Crawford

“Problems occur when we tie our peace of mind to another’s state of mind.”

Bill Crawford

“There are only three things we ‘have to’ do in this world … we have to be born, we have to die, and we have to live until we die. Everything else is a choice!”

Bill Crawford

“Change isn’t always easy, but with purposeful practice, any old habit can be replaced with a way of being we would recommend to those we love.”

Bill Crawford

“You never want to tie your responsibility to another’s irresponsibility.”

Bill Crawford

“Just because we have a thought, doesn’t mean it is a thought worth having.”

Bill Crawford

“Everyone we interact with is changed forever. The only questions are: How will they be different (and how different will they be), and how will we be different (and how different will we be) as a result?”

Adapted from Seth Godin

“Our success and happiness depends not on simply knowing where we stand, but in where we are wanting to go.”

Bill Crawford

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

George Bernard Shaw

“There’s no such thing as a ‘stressful’ situation.”

Bill Crawford

“Mistakes are just ‘mis-takes,’ or an action that we took that missed.”

Bill Crawford

“Meaning isn’t something we discover, it is what we bring to life, either by choice or by chance.”

Bill Crawford

“There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.”

Mahatma Gandhi

“A healthy attitude is certainly contagious, but don’t wait to catch it from others. Become a carrier!”

Adapted from Tom Stoppard

“Stress is a signal something needs to change… suffering is when we don’t make the change.”

Bill Crawford

“Love will keep us safe when we commit to choosing the kind of qualities, characteristics, and relationships that we would recommend to someone we love.”

Bill Crawford

“There are two ways to look at most problems… ‘Oh Crap!’ or, ‘Good Information!,’ and our choice will give us good information on how to deal with problems in the future.”

Bill Crawford

“It’s not what we feel, but what we feed, that determines our experience of life.”

Bill Crawford

“The truth is, people have the absolute right to be just as unhappy and miserable as they want to be.”

Bill Crawford

“To spank or not to spank isn’t the question… the question is whether whether we are teaching a quality we want our kids to have as adults.”

Bill Crawford

“The test of our humanity is the ability to have compassion for the people we know well enough not to like.”

Adapted from the play, "After Ashley," by Gina Gionfriddo

“When faced with conflicting thoughts and emotions, we must decide what to trust, what we fear, or what we know. What’s important is that this decision be made by the knowledgeable versus the anxious part of who we are.”

Bill Crawford

“I wish I had the courage to live a life that was true to myself, versus the life that was expected of me.”

Browny Ware

“Serenity is not just an escape, but a precursor to acceptance, courage, wisdom, and change.”

Bill Crawford

“If you want to change your life, you must change your mind and change your brain… on purpose.”

Bill Crawford

“To influence others, we must know what is influencing them… and they must know that we get it.”

Bill Crawford

“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”

Albert Einstein

“Becoming critical in the face of criticism, only inspires more criticism.”

Bill Crawford

“Nothing is meaningless … it’s how we assign meaning to the past that determines how we experience the present, and future.”

Bill Crawford

“When we take care of ourselves like we would take care of someone we love, the quality of our living and our giving goes up.”

Bill Crawford

“To understand ourself, we must understand our “selves,” or the parts of us that motivate our thoughts, decisions, and behaviors.”

Bill Crawford

“The key to self-confidence is knowing that you would choose you … and why. In this way the chosen becomes the chooser, and love versus fear becomes the energy of choice.”

Bill Crawford

“When stress and anxiety have your system stuck in a brainstem loop? Reboot. It’s I.T. for life!”

Bill Crawford

“That’s just common sense” is used by many to justify their perspective. However, how we “sense” or understand life varies greatly from individual to individual. Therefore, rather than needing to justify our “sense” as “common,” how about we just ensure that our perceptions are purposeful, and congruent with what we would recommend to someone we love?”

Bill Crawford

“One thing that holds us back is fearing our weaknesses more than having confidence in our strengths.”

Adapted from the book "Now Discover Your Strengths" by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton.

“When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It’s to enjoy each step along the way.”

Wayne Dyer

“If buttons are to be pushed, let’s ensure we are doing the pushing, and the buttons represent what we want in ourselves and others.”

Bill Crawford

“Great solutions see serenity and acceptance as the precursor to courage and change.”

Bill Crawford

“There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change, but it doesn’t change. While you hold it, you can’t get lost. Good things happen, bad things happen, and it is harder for others to see. Regardless, you never let go of the thread!”

Adapted from William Stafford

“Stress is a chemical reaction in our brain and body designed to prepare us for fight or flight. These chemicals do not exist in the situation but in us. No situation is “full of stress,” and therefore, there’s no such thing as a stressful situation.”

Bill Crawford

“Freedom is the ability to take risks without the prospect of shame.”

Adapted from Seth Godin

“Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know before you learned it.”

Maya Angelou

“Just because people are fueled by drama, doesn’t mean we have to attend every performance.”

Cheryl Richardson

“Our kids won’t always do what we say … but they will do what we do!”

Bill Crawford

“Your reputation doesn’t follow you everywhere. It gets there before you do.”

Aliza Licht

“You can’t change what’s going on around you until you change what’s going on within you.”

Zig Ziglar

“Never let the ‘issue du jour’ obscure what is really important.”

Bill Crawford

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

Chinese Proverb

“We can’t have constructive conversations with others while having destructive conversations with ourselves.”

Bill Crawford

“Most of the problems in life are because of two reasons – we act without thinking, or we keep thinking without acting.”

Unknown

“Money is like energy, it should be conserved with purpose to serve with purpose.”

Bill Crawford

“‘Peeves’ make lousy pets. They bite, eat too much, crap all over the place, and don’t clean up after themselves.”

Adapted from Seth Godin

“Life gets better when we choose the desire to influence over the need to control.”

Bill Crawford

“If we carry old bricks from our past to our future, we will end up being weighed down by situations and people we really want to forget.”

Bill Crawford

“4 Questions That Can Change Your Life!”

1. Am I doing/feeling/thinking this on purpose? 2. How’s it working for me? 3. Is this the way I want to be defined? 4. Would I teach this way of being to someone that I love?

Bill Crawford

“Serenity is the precursor to acceptance, courage, wisdom and change.”

Bill Crawford

“Patience isn’t simply the ability to wait, but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting.”

Joyce Meyer

“When truth is what we are looking for, let’s make sure we are not trusting the “fake news” part of the brain.”

Bill Crawford

“To worry or not to worry … what if the answer is neither?”

Bill Crawford

“Simply striving for achievement can create a life of strife, punctuated by momentary victories, while a life of fulfillment imbues each moment with joy and meaning. Quite an achievement, don’t you think?”

Bill Crawford

“Sometimes, the best way to solve a problem is to stop participating in the problem.”

Jonathan Meed

“A belief is not merely an idea that the mind possesses, it is an idea that possesses the mind.”

Robert Oxton Bolt

“To understand ourself, we must understand our “selves,” or the parts of us that motivate our thoughts, decisions, and behaviors.”

Bill Crawford

“Confidence is the ability to understand another’s perspective without needing to accept or reject it in order to move from conflict to consensus.”

Bill Crawford

“Looking for the internal ‘how’ versus the external ‘why’ is one key to creating the life we want. We will have more success in influencing the world around us if we start with the world within.”

Bill Crawford

“In order to make significant changes in the quality of our relationships, we must make the future more important than the past.”

Bill Crawford

“In order to create the life we want, what we want must be congruent with why we want it.”

Bill Crawford

“In addition to ‘a purpose’ or a clear sense of what you want and why, we also need ‘a place’ to practice. When this ‘place’ also includes being surrounded by others wanting the same thing, life gets much better, much quicker.”

Bill Crawford

“Possibility is not the same as reality. But without belief in possibility, our reality is going to be severely curtailed. We can only do our work (life) justice by examining what’s possible, and then deciding if we care enough to pursue it.”

Seth Godin

“Your reputation doesn’t follow you everywhere; it gets there before you do.”